Trader Joe's has ARRIVED!!

September 06, 2012

Posted By: Megan Greenberg

Trader Joe’s is officially opening and the sheer excitement of getting our hands all over new products is so thrilling that we can barely sleep. The prospect of a new grocery store that focuses on customer’s requests, like being eco-friendly and offering GMO-free goods at extremely reasonable prices, is more exhilarating than winning the lottery. We are total food nerds. Plus, have you heard about their snacks? Oodles of items line store shelves waiting to be added to the lunchboxes and pantries of children and adults. Bonus: many of their items are organic and cage-free and the store aims to focus on sustainability. We can’t wait to see it for ourselves and find out if Trader Joe’s lives up to the hype!

One of my favorite food bloggers, How Sweet It Is, lives and dies by Trader Joe's. Every now and again she features her TJ grocery goods in a picture by picture blog (like this) that leaves me yearning for products that I not only never knew existed but would probably never add to my grocery list. Cookie Butter? Blueberry Vanilla Goat Cheese? Crunchy Green Beans? However, she would also fill her cart with items like savory hummus, organic vanilla extract and brussels sprouts. Trader Joe's is all about balance. Healthy or not, her pics and descriptions left me wanting to drive to the nearest state to fill my cart with frozen peas and Cocoa Almond Spread!

Trader Joe’s is meant to be appealing to the customer on all levels. From employees in Hawaiian shirts to cedar planked walls to gluten-free goodies, this business aims to please and has done so for over 50 years. One of their biggest claims to fame is their focus on ‘value’ and their promise to provide great products at great prices. Like really great prices. The kind of receipt that makes you wonder if they actually rung up all of your items. They also pride themselves on offering innovative, hard-to-find, great-tasting foods in the "Trader Joe's" name, which cut costs and saves money.

But, what do we really want to know? We want to know what to buy!! Now, you guys know that 3K generally makes all of their meals from scratch, however we are human, after all, which means sometimes we want to rip into a bag of popcorn or eat peanut butter straight from the jar. So, we turned to The Huffington Post who recently featured an article from one of our favorite sites, The Daily Meal, which ranked Trader Joe’s namesake goods on a scale of best to worst. Here are the winners of Daily Meal’s 15 category breakdown, including Worst Stuff Ever and Spousal Discrepency.